elected. >> let's go back to the bush-era tax cuts. for you, given your position, that's really what we want to focus on here. you make the point that democrats could have voted before when they had super majorities or big majoritiemajo and that's a fair point. but in part thanks to you, voting for tax increases is a political death for republicans and democrats. that brings me to my next question. i've talked to republicans and democrats who think we are going to go off the cliff, and here's the reason why. if we go off the cliff, everybody's taxes go up automatically. then congress can come back in january and vote for a tax cut as opposed to tax increases. what do you think about that? >> one of the challenges, of course, is people see this happening. they realize the president has not been negotiating at all over the past three months. we learned days and weeks and months afterwards that they had non-meetings where this is going on. i was a strong advocate of having c-span cameras in the negotiating room so you wouldn't have this s